Unsolved Muders
by Momentous
Summary: This was written for a fairytale challenge.  This is the Supernatural answer to the Robber Bridegroom aka Sam and Dean hunt down a fairytale mystery.


"Please," the girl whimpered as she watched the monsters circling.

"Please… Please…," they all mimicked back with perfect impersonations of her frightened pleading.

One of the monsters offered her a glass of white wine. When she refused it was thrown in her face, a garish mockery of a melodrama soap opera. The act was repeated with a glass of red wine, but when the odd yellow drink was offered and refused, they carefully forced every drop down her delicate white throat. As her world grew foggy, she lashed out with the small, iron knife. She connected with something but her limited strength was fading by the second. Her last conscious thought was the knife being pried from her fingers.

* * *

"Sure, Ellen, we'll look in on Jo," Dean rolled his eyes at Sam over the Impala. "No ma'am, I'm not getting smart with you." Dean rolled his eyes again and Sam could hear Ellen's pitch rising on the other end of the line. Ellen wasn't one to overreact and the tone had Sam concerned. Dean was getting worried too, though he'd never admit it. "I'm sure Jo's alright. She's a decent hunter." Dean flinched when Ellen started shouting again. "No ma'am, you're absolutely right, decent isn't good enough in our line of work." Dean held the phone away from his ear as Ellen's volume and pitch rose again.

"What the hell's goin' on?" Sam mouthed to Dean.

Dean shrugged as he pulled the phone back to his ear. "What exactly do you think she was hunting?" Dean's expression was a picture of confusion as he listened to Ellen's explanation, a fact that made Sam even more nervous. "Are you sure? I mean, Jo never seemed quite stupid enough to go after a wendigo on her own. Plus, if she said 'wendigos' that has to be wrong. Honestly Ellen, have you ever heard of wendigos traveling in groups?" Sam could tell Dean was trying to calm himself with logic as much as Ellen. "Either way, we're on our way, don't worry."

Dean closed the phone and jumped into the Impala.

"Dean?" Sam practically shouted as he climbed into the passenger seat.

"We're going to Maine."

* * *

"No, Dean, that's ridiculous!" Sam huffed.

"Don't you think I know that?" Dean shot back. "I'm not trying to convince you there is a pack of wendigos running around in the woods of Aroostook State Park. However, there is something in the area that likes to eat pretty, little, blonde girls."

"Have you ever heard of a wendigo being anymore specific than human?"

"Shit, Sam, stop arguing with Ellen and Jo. They're the ones who think it's wendigos. My guess is an actual human serial killer. Nothing else really fits the bill."

"Why do you think Jo went after it or them, then?"

"Well, from what Ellen was saying, Jo really gets her rocks off going after things where she can use herself as bait."

"Damn, she's stupid."

"Naw, well, yeah, but she's not doing it out of stupidity. She's trying to prove herself, prove that nothing scares her."

"She's still a moron," Sam grumbled as he pulled out John's journal, trying to convince himself that it wasn't a pack of wendigos.

* * *

Jo was shaking; head to toe tremors. She had watched as the monsters ate the girl she had claimed to be helping. She was wracked by the guilt of using this girl as bait, of arming her with nothing but a small iron knife. Silent tears were spilling down her cheeks as she fought the urge to wretch. The room was full of sleeping monsters; one noise would add her blood to the stains on the stone floor. She climbed slowly out from behind the hogshead. She slipped silently out of the mansion and into the night. She ran full on until her legs gave out. She drew protective circles in the dirt around herself before letting the guilt take her. She wretched and sobbed and fell asleep curled into herself and shaking.

* * *

Dean parked in the lot of Aroostook Motel. Everything was wood and was decorated in attempt to look like an old fashion hunting lodge, including a large wooden bear pointing out the ice machine.

Sam was already buried deep into research; Dean had dropped him off at the local library they had passed on the way into town. Dean checked in and dragged the duffels into the room. He wasn't ready to call it a night. Jo was out there somewhere and he'd promised Ellen he'd find her.

* * *

Dean pulled into the main lot of the one day visitors part of the park, and climbed out of the Impala. As he searched the lot, looking for a likely witness, he saw an old blue ford pickup. He'd only seen it once and he'd been barely conscious and getting closer to outright panic than any Winchester ever got, but he remembered Jo getting him into this truck and taking him back to the bar Sammy had trashed and tied her up in.

Dean scanned the crowd again, hoping to see a skinny blonde annoyed that he was crashing her gig. What he did find pleased him a bit less.

"You look like a man who could use a good knife," the stranger said. "Now, I know this knife looks small, but it's strong, pure iron. See these initials here, W.A.H., they are…"

"Stop talking!" Dean growled as he snatched the knife out of the man's hand. The man shut up, more because of the ten-inch blade that had appeared out of nowhere and was currently pressing into his gut than from Dean's commanding tone. "Where did you get this?" The man shivered as Dean dragged his eyes from the knife and locked gazes with his captive audience.

"It was a gift from my father, he got it from his father, the initials stand for…"

"William Anthony Harvelle. I know this wasn't handed down to you. It belonged to my sister last. Dad gave it to her to protect herself and if you've laid a hand of her little blonde head, I'll kill you, slowly."

* * *

"_So, my boyfriend, Nick isn't human?" Amy quirked an eyebrow at Jo._

"_No, well, I mean you're wrong, I mean misunderstanding." Jo ran her hand through her hair. Dealing with the civilians wasn't one of her greatest talents. "I think Nick is human, but working for a non-human. Possibly a few. I think he plans on offering you to them."_

"_Uh huh." Amy nodded. "If I dump his ass and see you hanging around him in a day or two I will so go hellcat on your ass."_

"_Well, I sort of thought maybe you'd continue dating him. He said he was taking you somewhere special tonight, right?"_

"_You're full on spying on me? Is it my pants you want in and not Nick's, 'cause I'm open to it. I'm in college. Experimentation and all that."_

_Jo rolled her eyes. "I don't want to get in to your pants. I don't want into anyone's pants."_

"_You are like a bubbling pot of sexual frustration. There has to be a pair of pants somewhere you want into. Tell me about him or her or…"_

"_If I tell you about him, will you listen to me?"_

"_Maybe."_

"_He's gorgeous, he's a hunter like me and his brother tried to kill me once."_

"_Bummer."_

"_Are you going to listen to my plan now?"_

"_Listen, sure, but I am not agreeing to anything."_

"_Well, he wants to take you somewhere special."_

"_He who, your hottie…"_

"_Nick! Your boyfriend."_

"_Oh, right, I'm back, continue."_

"_Well, you go to his special place and I follow. Then I kill whatever he's giving you to."_

"_Wow, so, I get to be bait."_

"_Not exactly,"_

"_How is this a 'not exactly'?"_

"_Fine, I'm using you as bait, but here." Jo shoved her knife into Amy's hands. "Pure iron. Repels demons. It should stand up to just about anything we're going to meet. That should keep you safe long enough for me to do the rest."_

Jo woke to the sound of a very loud bird screeching over head. She threw up again from the smell around her and the images still floating through her brain. She stood and tried to shake it off. She had to get back to civilization, preferably before sunset, and she only had a marginal idea of where she was. She looked at the sun and chose a direction.

As she hiked, she made a list if people she could call, she knew Sam and Dean would be willing to lend a hand but she wasn't really sure she wanted to see them. There was no way she was calling her mom and that put Ash out as well. Nearly every hunter she'd met gave her that 'but you're a girl' face and ignored her. After an hour she decided it was either the Winchesters or finish it herself. Neither option seemed good.

* * *

Sam found the motel with little difficulty. He knew Dean must have found a lead, otherwise he would have had a ride back from the library. He was, however, a little startled to find the lead tied to a chair in the motel room with Dean's knife a breath away from his eyeball.

"I miss something?" Sam asked, calmly.

"Please tell me you're working for the motel and going to rescue me from this psycho," the man tied to the chair begged Sam.

"Actually, I'm his brother," Sam stated, setting down the bags from the diner.

"He's on my team," Dean smirked.

"Who is this guy?" Sam asked, his tone perching on the edge of annoyed, since his brother hadn't filled him in yet.

"Well, he calls himself Nick, and he tried to sell me this." Dean jammed a small knife into the wood of the table. Sam recognized the knife as quickly as Dean had; Jo tried to cut him with it once.

* * *

Jo made it back to her truck an hour after sundown. She made it back to the motel she'd been staying at ten minutes later. She barely missed scratching the black paint of the car next to her when she swung out of her truck. Jo would recognize the car anywhere, Dean's car. The Winchester's were here.

Jo had to peep into a few windows before she found the right room. She watched Dean threaten the pathetic excuse for a man with her daddy's knife with a happy tingle in her belly.

"I swear to God, if you've hurt one hair on my baby sister's head, I will…" Dean slammed his fist on the table, too furious to even put words to all the bad things spinning through his head.

Jo felt her stomach drop to her knees. If the situation had been reversed and she was forced to make-up a pretend relationship between herself and Dean in order to make the fury more realistic, she would have gone with boyfriend. Dean said sister. Apparently possessed Sam had been telling the truth.

"If I were you," Sam added. "I wouldn't wait for him to come up with things to do to you. Just tell us where she is."

Jo gave Sam a quick once over, and then a slower one. He didn't look possessed anymore, but she hadn't actually heard how that had all turned out and Sam hadn't looked possessed until she was bent over the bar. Still, she doubted Dean would allow anything to possess Sam for long.

Jo decided it was safe, and knocked on the door.

* * *

Dean had been carefully putting the fear of God into Nick for just under two hours and Sam had joined in nearly forty minutes ago when they were interrupted by a rough knock at the door. Sam, who had a talent for translating knocks, went to the door expecting a man at least close to his brother's size. He found Jo Harvelle.

Jo stiffened when Sam lifted her off the ground in a gigantic bear hug. Sam had a split second flashback to the last time he'd seen Jo and placed her back on the ground. When Dean hugged her, Jo was a bit quicker to respond, wrapping her arms around his back and holding tightly. She'd never admit to anyone how truly terrified she'd been for the last forty-eight hours, but having Dean's solid form under her hands definitely had a grounding effect.

"Oh thank God," Nick sighed, before straightening himself and putting on his used car salesman face. "Since I'm sure I am interrupting this happy family reunion, why don't you untie me and let me go?"

Jo backed away from Dean, crossed the room, grabbed a pistol off the table and whipped Nick hard on his temple with the butt.

* * *

"So, care to fill us in?" Sam asked.

"So, it really is wendigos, as in more than one?" Dean gaped. It had been years since something surprised him this profoundly.

"Yes, but not the way they act historically," Jo was shaking slightly, not the fear shiver that Dean would have expected, but the pulse of too much adrenaline coursing through her veins. "Nick was courting Amy, like old fashioned courting, flowers and candy and I'm going to take you away from life as a waitress. They teased her before they ate her. They tried to get her drunk. It looked like frat boys trying to roofie their next gang bang victim. I was using her as bait to draw the bastard out. I gave her the damned knife. One lousy little knife against at least seven wendigos."

"That doesn't make any sense," Dean huffed.

"Holy Shit!" Sam gasped, jumping up from his bed and diving for his duffel. "You said they tried to get her drunk. Did they use wine?"

"Yeah," Jo answered, her brow furrowed. She looked over at Dean who just shrugged and watched his brother.

"Three glasses, one red, one white and one weird yellowish one?"

"Yeah, what the hell, Sam?"

Sam pulled out a well read book and started flipping through it. "Wendigos always become wendigos because they are forced to eat other people, a matter of survival, right?" He looked up and was met by silent nods from Jo and Dean. "What if these guys chose cannibalism, what if they wanted to be this?" Sam tossed the book on the small table.

"_The Robber Bridegroom_?" Dean looked up and made a face at his brother. "Dude, you seriously carry around a copy of Grimm's Fairytales? You are such a geek."

"Shut up, jerk, they're like the origin of half the world's myths and legends."

"That doesn't make sense Sam," Jo broke in. "The story says there were at least fifteen men and there was only about seven wendigos. Also, the men in the story were caught and hung."

"Actually, think about it. Maybe the hanging killed a bunch of them, but maybe the worst of them had transcended humanity already," Sam explained.

"Don't you think someone would have noticed a few missing bodies?" Jo snapped.

"There's a million and one reasons that a few missing bodies could have been overlooked," Dean answered. "Including the possibility that the psychotic murderers murdered a couple of look-a-likes to take their places in the pine boxes. My problem is," Dean began, turning towards his brother, "why haven't they shown up before now?"

"Maybe they have." Sam was getting excited, no matter how creepy the answer was, Sam always loved solving the puzzle. "Think about every unanswered murder mystery in history from Jack the Ripper to Chandra Levy, any one of them, possibly all of them, could be this group of low lives."

"Wow, we may have found Jack the Ripper. That's sort of awesome," Jo stated with a smirk.

Dean glanced over at Jo. "You're right, you are sort of twisted. Can we please get beyond the 'wow isn't this fun and historical' and get to the finding and the killing part?"

"Finding won't be hard," Sam stated, in his traditional 'look how smart I am' tone that always appeared when he'd figured things out.

"I doubt I could find the place again." Jo answered, slightly embarrassed about the fact that she had ran and not looked back.

"Not you," Sam grinned. "Him." The groan from the corner reminded the group of the unconscious liaison in the room.

* * *

The three hunters climbed into the Impala after leaving Nick in his apartment, unconscious again. They had a detailed map to find the home of the wendigos. When they were about ten minutes away, Jo called the cops. Telling him a man named Nick had been seducing her and when she got to his apartment, she found a room with pictures of pretty girls and their missing person's reports. She felt pretty sure that he was a serial killer. Luckily, Sam, Dean and Jo didn't need to plant evidence; Nick's apartment already looked like the lair of a killer.

* * *

"So, here we are." Sam stated calmly. "Now what?"

"We kill them," Jo responded, a very slight tremor to her voice.

"Very good, Jo," Sam snapped. "How do you propose we do that?"

"Well, don't wendigos burn?"

"Yeah, but it's hard enough to catch one much less seven."

"We could draw them out, separate them."

"That might work for maybe two, if we're lucky."

"What do you propose?"

"Children, please?" Dean interrupted. When Jo and Sam looked over, he was holding a couple of jugs of accelerant and a lighter. "You two are thinking small. Lock'em in. Torch the whole damn place."

Jo wanted to stay and make sure none of the creatures escaped, but she reluctantly followed the Winchesters back to the Impala when the sirens became audible. The pillar of smoke was still visible as the three sat silently in the motel parking lot.

"You know, one of these days, we ought to hang out and grab a drink when we aren't hunting something," Jo chuckled mirthlessly.

"Honestly, Jo," Dean responded. "Since you've left the Roadhouse, how often are you not hunting something?"

"Good point." Jo looked down at her feet and then back up at Dean. "Why sister?"

"What?" Dean asked, brows snapping together at the lack of transitions in Jo's query.

"I'm going to get our stuff," Sam stated, ducking quickly into the motel room.

Jo waited until the door had closed before continuing. "When you were drilling Nick for information on my whereabouts, you said you were looking for your sister. Why?"

"It's always easier to get information out of someone when they really believe you're going to hurt them. The quickest way is to convince them of a close relationship."

"Uh huh, I know. What I'm asking is why sister. Situation reversed; I'd have gone with boyfriend."

Dean grunted and avoided Jo's eyes.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Jo leaned up and kissed Dean lightly on the cheek. "I guess I can live with being an honorary Winchester." Jo crossed to her truck and pulled the door open. "Tell Sam I said good-bye."

Dean stared after her as she climbed into her truck and drove away. Only when the truck's rumbling engine was no longer audible in the night did Sam come back out of the motel carrying both duffels.

"Jo said good-bye," Dean stated climbing into the driver's seat of the Impala.

Sam tossed the duffels in the trunk and then climbed in himself.

"Sammy, did I just turn down the chance at sex with a hot blonde?"

"I believe you did, Dean."

"Why?"

"Well, maybe you realized that it would hurt Jo and you actually care about her more than that. Perhaps, you're just maturing."

"Damn, I was afraid of that." Dean started the engine, the Eagles' _Get Over It_ blaring from the radio chasing away the silence as he pulled out into the night, turning the Impala in the opposite direction Jo had taken.


End file.
